China UnionPay fights back in the mobile payments competition, launching alternative to Alipay

11 December 2017

As consumers in China are heavily using their mobile phones to perform transactions with the industry led by Alipay and Tencent, China UnionPay, the country’s largest card scheme, decided to enter the fray announcing the introducing of a new integrated mobile application for all banks nationwide.

As a major incentive to the mobile payment services offering, UnionPay has also launched a proactive campaign across China to attract consumers enchanted by Alipay and Tencent with high rebates.

In its official statement UnionPay reported that the new application dubbed QuickPass has been developed jointly with the central bank of China and represents a unified solution using all resources available for commercial banks, providing customers with unmatched level of access to mobile payments capability.

According to the comments made by analysts, UnionPay is staging this major counterattack in the fight for customers as the Internet giants in China have invaded the market.

Unified mobile payment offering put forth by UnionPay features both Near-Field Communication technologies and QR codes. Earlier, UnionPay reported that there is a project of facial recognition technology underway.

The new mobile payment platform could establish connection to more than one bank account at various national banks, and their respective mobile banking and other financial services will be available from one application.